This ruling is unfortunately another example of how our courts and our system of checks of balances has totally failed. The idea that the FBI can eliminate your 1st Amendment rights by issuing you a letter flies in the face of everything that a free society is based on.
I'm curious why the technology industry in the only one pushing back on this? This must be affecting other industries too. Or are we just the only ones who give a shit?
The total lack of push-back from the banking/finance sector is what I find interesting, they have no shortage of lawyers. I get the impression that nobody ever expected them to not be totally submissive to gov requests.
I would assume it comes into contact with it more..? The technology industry is behind telecom infrastructure, consumer facing communications, etc; all of which seem like better targets than banks or the financial industry.
afaik no one ever went public announcing and publishing NSL right as he got it. I could only google one case of someone publishing 11 year old redacted letter after spending years in court.
Going public first and waiting for FBI move would be a better test of 1st amendment than complaining FBI keeps sending those and people get intimidated into submission.
Kudos to whoever has the balls to sit in solitary confinement in federal prison for years or decades while the kangaroo courts here in the USA consider and reject their pleas for justice.
Wait, did I miss something? Did Congress successfully amend the Constitution? Because if something was unconstitutional before, how did it become conditionally just by a law being passed?
Why don't more people just ignore the gag orders? I would. I understand most people won't, but there certainly should be more than one guy who illegally revealed his NSL in the 15 years or so since they began.
Because people have things to lose, and because the justice system doesn't always work as expected. Being proverbially gagged by the federal government violates everything I believe in America, but that revulsion doesn't necessarily mean that I'm willing to do significant prison time to object to.
There are people that are that brave, and their actions are indeed commendable, but many people have jobs, families, friends and social status that they'd probably like to keep intact moreso than their instinct to "stick up for what's right".
It's an interesting coordination problem. It would be possible for a reputable party to say "I have spoken with X service providers and they have agreed to publish their Y NSLs on future date Z. If you are a service provider and have received NSLs then contact me and I'll include you." The reputable party might have to be beyond the reach of USA rulers.
I think this may not be enough. The expected behaviour of each other party would be to wait until others sign up so that if the plan succeeds, they could jump out and say they got a NSL too. Since everyone things that way, nobody signs up.
I'm a bit rusty on my game theory, but I do recall there are some ways around this deadlock.
One possibility would be if many companies "allowed themselves" to get hacked by a third party (out of USGOV's reach) that would conveniently find and publish the documents about NSLs (if such exist). Companies would get the benefit of plausible deniability.
Kickstarter (and similar) already implement the obvious way around the deadlock: get people to agree to act conditional on getting a certain minimum number to so agree. That way, the first person to make the agreement has nothing to lose if no one else signs up, so they can sign up and thus provide the momentum to get other people to.
posting NSL letters at the same time is not the right solution, IMO.
it targets a single issue in a system that is rife with corruption.
they'll pull some fix like they did with NSA tapping phones, just have someone else be the bad guy (in that case having phone providers tap everything).
the solution needs to be much larger scale. My proposal would be to coordinate via the Internet a giant hooky day.
just stop going to our jobs. you know, those things that are the life blood of the whole shit show?
have some form letter that people email in as their excuse:
Hey $BOSS,
In solidarity with blah blah blah I'll not be returning to my job until government pays attention to the demands of its people.
Here are some (legit) sources with poll data highlighting the issues most pressing to the American public. Here's historical data about how Congress has been passing legislation that is in effect, contrary to those concerns.
Until this incongruity is addressed, I'll be working with my friends, family, and neighbors directly to address the issues ourselves. Regretfully this means I won't have time to give a rats ass about my mindless role at your useless company.
Might not be good enough. In this case, if there's even a slight chance for that agreement to leak out with the list of signatories, those companies that signed have a lot to lose. Such an agreement would need to be verbal. Kickstarter doesn't have this problem.
